The nostalagic train ride

Today I was sitting on the window seat of the train, hearing the crowd drown in my ipods sound. I didn’t even realize that the train had started to move. I felt a gentle breeze down my sweaty face, the summer being the gracious being in my fractured, tired and unfruitful day.
I was running late, returning home at horrifying timings like 9.00 pm ( the work getting stressful as ever). As the train galloped on its iron rod roads, my eyes staring at the nothings of the dark night, watching the flashes of street lights and occasional slum bulbs whizzing past my eyes.I felt my tiredness in my body and eyes; I thought how energetic and proactive I used to be. The past started whizzing in those lights passing by, and from the dark unknown rose somethings I never knew I remembered.

I didn’t know how lonely and sad It felt sitting here, it was like im some unknown face in this alien place, and im moving towards an unknown destination, almost like this is where I am the lonely tired, moody fat guy. Where are the rest of the positive moments? Have they lost?

Invariably I’m thinking when was it when I enjoyed the most? That was surely the farthest from today, my childhood, during my school days, the happy years. Was it when I reached home from school, seeing my mom waiting at the bus top to pick me up?, or when I was older and won the fancy dress as a wait lifter or when I read my first poem to the class, and it got published in the school calendar. When my teacher awarded me the first merits, or when my favorite teacher gave me a chocolate for some silly answer. All these moments made me smile and I realized that I was looking so foolish smiling in the local train at no one at something. It looks like I am some retarded, wonked guy. I looked around sheepishly to see if someone noticed, and saw that at the adjacent seat on the other side of the aisle, a young couple ( must be 30’s) smiling and laughing at each other, I involuntarily smiled at them, even seeing people in love, makes you happy, imagine being in love.

I don’t have to go there again I thought, let’s see, my first crush in school, hmm many heart aches, when you didn’t know that there was such a pain inside you, that you long for and then can’t stand. It’s like some kind of feeling that will confuse a hormonal exploding teen to feel as a Mount Fiji full of lava, morphed of arsenal and ammunition to fight the world alone. It gives you the power to feel, that you could do anything to be with her for a few moments. I enjoy remembering the fool hardy things I did for my crush. Just that she should even notice me in school and how I just wrote poems and diaries about her beauty and her smile and her weird “girls rest room- gang” friends, my anxiousness that would I ever be able to live without seeing her, searching for her frantically before classes, during lunch and after school. Just to pass by her class and using the other boys room, and risk peeping into the class. I never did anything dare devilry like writing a note and giving a sly open hello or meeting her alone, or actually gifting her something. Though I wanted to gift her myself J , as if I was some treasure she would love to have and keep in her almost as heavy school bag. But that was because I didn’t have any money on me, the times when I spoke to her got my heart racing and my through dry enough to bleed if I spoke,
I just couldn’t open my mouth. I remember I had enrolled in a play where she was also a part and I thought God has given my chance to show her what I really am ( smuggishly). But my first dialogue with her ( she was ghandijis, phoren journalist, meera ..and I was a harijan at bapus bhavan) I was a small part and was put only because I could sing and would be singing Bapus favorite bhajan vaishov vajan to. I had to tell her to join us for the bhajan, and during the first rehearsal I cracked my voice ( the developing boys voice was a factor), the second time I shouted my dialogue as if it was a seed spitting out, so fast that I was nearly thrown out by my teacher. I finally got my pride back by staring at her shoes and delivering my dialogue as if it were a shameful thing to sing the bhajan.

Later I remember how I used to almost jump with excitement, when she noticed me and smiled a friendly hello. I had weaved all kinds of king queen stories about her and me. I was an imaginative fellow then, but when it was mixed with optimism ( fired by my friends teasing me with her). I had the courage to give her all my coupons ( some 150) which I had begged my parents to buy to play in the school carnival (fete). I would have happily given my bicycle if she had just mentioned. I remember the school carnival, when me and my friends had planned to win all the GI joe action figures and actually analysed our chances of winning them as 99 of 100 and then I didn’t have a single ticket to play. My friends actually teased me by winning some whistles they won. That’s when I wanted to ask her if she cud lend me a 5 rupee coupan for a lucky dip where everyone gets a whistle or a mask.
But then I didn’t manage to and was left sitting in one corner watching everyone with jealousy, but when I saw my girl winning a big teddy on my coupons, I remember being the happiest of all times of my then and probably this nano lifetime. That’s when i understood sacrifice is love.

All these episodes are so much of innocence and some kind of love that I have lost in my life today,
Don’t know about my future, but my past will always stay there to remind me that the trains never gonna reach your destination, wake up and get down of this speeding, hurling roller coaster train and enjoy the “keeps you smiling” things in life.